


Discipline

by Trash



Category: Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Human AU, Ice Skating AU, M/M, thorki au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2013-12-30
Packaged: 2018-01-06 17:55:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1109841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trash/pseuds/Trash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing matters whilst he skates - not his dead-end job at the video game store, not his shitty basement flat, not his turbulent relationship with his brother - just the hiss of steel on ice as he goes in for a jump.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Discipline

**Author's Note:**

> So I jumped on the skating AU bandwagon...

Loki wanted the five o'clock slot on the rink so he could train before work, but it was already taken by a ten year old and her coach. He settles for watching sulkily from the seats in darkness. The girl's crossovers are pretty clean, and she darts across the ice nimbly whilst her coach shouts at her from the sidelines. 

Something makes her lose concentration and she misses a turn, falling hard. Loki holds his breath and watches whilst she gathers herself. When she gets up her smile is as big as before, but now edged with pain. 

Loki drags his skate bag down to the bench by the rink and laces up his skates so tightly he can barely feel his feet. The boards are cold beneath his fingers but he doesn't spend long touching them, edges away from the side to do warm-up laps. 

Nothing matters. 

His muscles burn. Half turn, skate backwards. Nothing matters, not his shitty job or the one bedroom basement flat he shares with his brother with its taps that run brown sludge first thing in the morning and the rats in the walls. The steel on ice, the hiss as he goes in for a triple axel. 

And. 

Doesn't land it.

He slides across the ice on his side, winded. If this were a competition he would be marked down, probably more so for how long it takes him to get back up. He can hear his music in his head, feel the lights burn and the judges eyes bore into him. 

Only it isn't the judges' eyes, it's the hockey team’s, and even from across the rink Loki can hear them calling him a faggot. One of them over-arm pitches a puck at him and it skids across the ice. Loki jumps it, landing the turn with his middle finger raised. 

Another puck skids toward him and he darts away from it, makes sure to land his final turn, just out of spite, and present with an expression that says "I dare you."

He is still on the ice when the hockey players push open the gate, filing into the rink with idle chatter amongst themselves whilst Loki skates away from them. One of them deliberately bumps into him as he heads for the boards and that is the last fucking straw. Loki spins round, fixing him with a poisonous glare. "Have you taken so many hits to the head that you have no spatial awareness?"

"Have you sucked so many dicks you...you...can't see where you're fucking going?"

Loki raises an eyebrow. "Yes, actually, dick sucking does lead to blindness - which would explain why half of your team wouldn't last more than five minutes without their pads and helmets. It'd be like a bunch of nursery children playing Ring a Ring o' Roses - they'd all fall down."

"Volstagg," the hockey coach yells, "warm the fuck up."

Volstagg looks like he wants to say something else, clutches his stick tighter and snarls around his mouth guard. Loki smiles and skates backwards away from him, blowing him a kiss. "Run along, sweetheart."

And maybe next time he meets the hockey players it will be worse, maybe Volstagg will have told his team mates, and maybe they'll steal his stuff from where he leaves it by the benches (again). And maybe Loki doesn't have the energy to care.

***

Thor catches his three buses to the rink with impeccable timing but is still somehow the last person kitted up and on the ice. Coach penalises him by making him do twenty five laps in five minutes whilst the others warm up properly. 

He has never managed twenty five in five minutes, not ever, and when his blade slips out on a crossover and he falls he knows now won't be the time he manages it. He finishes on twenty laps, which isn't bad, but he can barely breathe and has to take out his gum shield, bracing his hands on his knees to gulp down air greedily whilst his coach sets up the drills. 

"We don't play hockey to get fit," he says, looking pointedly at Thor. "We get fit to play hockey."

Thor nods, acknowledging the reprimand by internalising it to mull over and over later when he can't sleep for his throbbing ankles and aching legs and - what the fuck muscle has he pulled in his shoulder, anyway?

Volstagg catches him at the water break before they split up for scrimmage. Thor smiles, opens his mouth to say hello, and is immediately taken out by a hockey stick to the skates. He lies on the ice, winded, groaning. "Fuck. What the hell was that for?"

"For letting your faggot little brother run his mouth like a bitch."

"What?" Thor glances across the ice to where Balder is in a huddle with the other scrimmage team. 

"Not him, the other one. The weird one."

"If you mean Loki you might want to talk about him with a little more respect. Whatever he said to you -"

Volstagg glares down at him. "He is as camp as a row of tents, Thor, and it makes me sick. And then he comes up to me, bashes into me, says the team is a bunch of cock suckers. Who does he fucking think he is? Tell him I'm going to break his fucking legs."

Thor pushes himself up slowly and smiles to himself. He takes a deep breath and shakes off his gloves, making a fist and sending it sailing straight into Volstagg's nose all in one graceful movement. Volstagg braces himself and shakes off his own gloves, but Thor ducks to avoid the swing and dives at his stomach, tackling him to the ground. 

Within seconds the entire team are circled around them cheering whilst Thor pins Volstagg down and rains punch after heavy punch into his face until his body goes limp. The cheering stutters to a halt and someone grabs Thor around the waist and drags him to his feet. Someone is yelling, it sounds like a war cry, and it takes Thor a while to realise it is him. 

The rink medics lift Volstagg from the ice on a stretcher and carry him to the first aid room, all whilst coach tries to control his rage. "Whatever is said in the heat of the moment doesn't matter, but he is your fucking team mate. You just pummelled our best fucking centre into unconsciousness. Congratulations. Consider yourself suspended but I still expect to see you on the bench at every practice with your rulebook taking notes every time someone so much as fucking farts."

Thor stops listening and skates toward the bench, tearing off his kit and working at untying his skates. The laces knot together and he growls, betrayed by his own equipment, and dumps it all in his skate bag. Suspended. For how long? He knows he should watch the scrimmage and speak to coach afterwards, be the bigger man, but he is too proud for any of that, always has been. So instead he shoulders his kit bag and walks out, raising a middle finger to the entire team as he leaves. 

***

Loki sits on the floor behind the counter of Game Station, cross legged, checking second hand games for laser burn. Serving underage boys with questionably violent video games is one perk of the job, and checking through traded in train simulation discs is another. He is just putting the disc back in the case when Sif digs the toe of her boot into his thigh. He looks up at her to hiss and she smiles pleasantly, "Your brother is here to see you."

Sighing, Loki stands up and raises an eyebrow at the sight he is met with. Both of Thor's eyes are black, his lip split. "You look like you've been dragged through a hedge backwards and you smell like the inside of a jockstrap."

"Can I have a word with you, brother? In private?"

Loki glances at Sif who shrugs. He takes that as a yes, and drags Thor to the staff room. "What happened to your face?"

"Volstagg happened. Jesus, Loki, can't you just keep your silver tongue under control for once? He beat ten shades of shit out of me because you called the team cock suckers. What the fuck?"

"But you are cock suckers. Well, _you_ are. And I have always questioned Fandral's sexuality..."

"This isn't funny, Loki. Volstagg said he wants to break your legs. Why do you pick fights with them?"

"Why does it bother you?" Loki snaps. "You're barely even on the team. You're only there to be the goon, be the one who shoulder checks the other team into the wall for all the girls to cheer at."

"That's not true," Thor mumbles. 

"Oh? Isn't it? Then why were you never interested in skating until we saw them cleaning blood from the ice with the Zamboni that one time before I had practice? Some of us take skating seriously, okay? This is about more than black eyes and sweaty knee pads for me."

"Fuck you. You think it isn’t for me? I want this to be my job - I want to dedicate everything to hockey. But until I prove myself I'm always just going to be stuck on this little league team, balancing practice with work at Dixie Chicken."

Loki laughs humourlessly. "Picking fights with your team on my behalf is hardly going to get you places, Thor. There's no room for goons in the teams that pay - you have to be able to actually play nowadays."

Thor balls his fists, teeth gritted. 

"Do you think I don't have bigger dreams than this?" Loki gestures around the staff room at the towers of video games stacked seven feet high all around them. "This horrendous job and our horrible flat? I feel like I haven't seen daylight for months because of that shit hole with its tiny windows. Aren’t you tired of watching rich people walk past on their way to their well paying jobs? I've become a connoisseur of Gucci shoes."

"I've never said you couldn't get where you want to be, though," Thor says. "The Olympics..."

Loki smiles tiredly, all the steam gone out of the argument. "I'm too old for the Olympics, brother. I might do well at the regional competitions but that's about it. But you...you could do it, make the big time." He steps forward and presses his lips to Thor's cheek in a fleeting kiss. "Train hard, skate harder, and you'll get there. Don't pick fights to defend me - I can defend myself." He opens the door to the shop floor and gestures with the sweep of one arm. "After you."

Thor walks out ahead of him, and Loki manages to school his expression into one of impassivity. Thor smiles weakly, and Loki forces his stage smile - bright and big but, like after a hard fall, edged with pain.


End file.
